


as we draw to a close

by Shamelessly_Radiant



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Fandom, Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally, Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gleb is Death AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 11:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14975852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamelessly_Radiant/pseuds/Shamelessly_Radiant
Summary: He is but the messenger of her fate, bringing with him a world with frayed edges and muted sounds, waiting until her time runs out.





	as we draw to a close

**Author's Note:**

> The idea comes from Shadow by Amethystlantern, the rest is entirely my own. I loved the idea of making Gleb Death, so I decided to roll with it.  
> Also. Ramin Karimloo.

Anastasia meets him for the first time when she is seventeen years old, trapped in a cold cellar and bleeding out. When she hazily blinks her eyes open, there he is, surrounded by red, red, _red_ , and his ice-cold hands are on her cheeks.

Tilting her face up.

Angling it for a kiss.

She blinks, and tries to think, to remember, but everything is hazy, as if the world became overcast with a layer of mist, with a sheen of red, and is fading at its edges. There are muffled noises, screams, but she cannot decipher the words, as if everything became muted, all she can feel and see clearly is this man— this man, dressed smartly in a uniform, with black hair combed neatly to one side and piercing dark eyes and hands upon her cheeks. She pulls back automatically at the puff of air she feels against her lips, and wishes she hadn’t moved when he hesitates, pulling back too to meet her gaze with his.

“Wait, don’t go!” she says, as he pulls back further, leaning back on his haunches, his grip becoming less firm. She catches one of his hands as he lets go.

He sighs, and smooths his other hand over her eyelids, and tired as they are, they obey and stay shut. For a moment, the world suddenly comes back and there is the a blinding hot pain of a blade piercing her skin, the screams gaining in volume in her ears, and then—

Darkness.

**_._ **

Anya only knows a few things with absolute certainty: she knows that once upon a time she must have had a family, she knows that something awful happened to her when she was seventeen, something that even now still makes children and eldery shrink away from her; perceptive as they are in a way adults block out, and she knows she has a constant companion, a man who calls himself Gleb and never leaves her, a man who promises her absolute freedom, and cities at her feet, who promises her relief and love, who promises her everything but what she wishes: home. A family. Her memories, to know who she is.

 _“Who are you?”_ She had asked him, the first time she saw him—the first time she remembered seeing him.

_“You don’t know?” he had sounded amused. As if it was merely an everyday occurrence that a stranger suddenly materialised on the windowsill next to your bed._

_“If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked you, would I?” Anya had replied, pointedly crossing her arms, and had tried to ignore the unsettling feeling of the world fading at its edges, of white noise replacing the bustling of the orphanage. It was as if everything was muted, and the strangest of all was the recognition of this, the feeling of remembrance, without the memory to accompany the knowledge that she had definitely lived through this once before._

_He had nodded his acquiescence, and continued to watch her, unnervingly insistent. His eyes, she had noticed, were a dark she had never seen before, piercing in their depths. They carried ages of knowledge, and a coldness, the burning certainty of a predator stalking its prey, knowing it could not get away._

_“Well?” Anya had spoken. “Your name,” she’d clarified at his arched eyebrows._

_“You can call me Gleb then, if you so desperately wish for me to have a name, Anas—“_

_“That is hardly an answer,” she had interrupted, unsettled by his countenance, wishing to one-up him. “And my name is not **Ana** , it’s…” here she had faltered, searching for the right words. “Well, they call me Anya.”_

_“They call you Anya? You don’t remember your name?”_

_“The nurses said I needed a name, so they called me Anya.” She had shrugged, and looked away from the fathomless depth of his eyes. She could fall right into them, and drown, and she would have never known what hit her._

_“That is hardly an answer, Anya.” He repeated her words, and she bristled._

_“What do you want?”_

_“To see you,” he had said, reaching out to touch her face, and he had sounded as if he announced every truth in the world, as if his answer was so obvious she shouldn’t even have bothered with asking and not wanting to ask why, she had made no reply, merely stepping away from his hand._

Gleb comes when she is at her lowest, and even though she always feels his presence, it is only when she feels life is too much to bear that he makes his presence known. When she was down to her last scrap of bread, shivering from the cold in the woods, or when she has been rejected for a job when she desperately needs the money, or when she feels she can no longer go on, weary of the never-changing road and the blisters on her feet, the hundreds of kilometers still separating her from her destination.

He will appear, and with his presence the world falls away, gets strange fraying edges and muted sounds. He sits by her, comforts her, lulls her into a trance, and tries to kiss her. Anya does not know why she absolutely refuses this, _must_ refuse his lips upon hers, but Anya carries many truths she does not know the explanation to. Like the fact that she speaks French, or that there was a diamond sown into her dress, or that the smell of peppermint and orange blossoms brings her such bliss. Anya has forgotten melodies at her fingertips, and forgotten names on her tongue. Accepting one more truth isn’t the hardest thing to do.

They share a strange equilibrium, and he seems both pleased and angry every time she refuses him. When she thought before he must be a guardian angel, she now simply sees him as a constant. It is a welcome sight in her ever changing life.

He often calls her Ana instead of Anya, and when he does it always seems as if he is leaving things unsaid, but she never can catch the sound of it. One time she had asked, and he had merely smiled, and his smile had promised danger. Sometimes the unknown is better when it stays that way.

Anya knows about keeping your head down and not asking questions.

Her life exists in some sort of strange routine— she works, she eats, she sleeps, until she gets to St. Petersburg.

And there she meets two men, and everything changes.

**_._ **

“I am going to Paris,” she tells him, “Dmitry believes I may be Anastasia, and Paris always has been—“

“Your clue, yes, I know Anya.” He replies, a tiny smirk gracing his features. He knows everything about her life, and this is something she easily forgets.

“Who are you?” she asks, as she has done countless times before. “Tell me, I need to know—“

“You believe you need so many things. _Need_ to have a family, need to go to Paris. Be careful of your wishes Anya, they may yet come true.”

He is gone before she can reply.

**_._ **

The following weeks become a mix of working as much as she can, and spending every spare moment she has with Dmitry and Vlad. She dances between her shifts with Dmitry, sits down for a cup of tea with Vlad and ends up not drinking a single sip of it, corrected constantly as she is about her posture, her hold of the cup, her _slurping_ —

“I do _not_ slurp!” She’d snapped at Dmitry, and when he had tried to demonstrate the sound she supposedly made she had simply thrown her tea into his face. Vlad’s rumbling laughter and the absolute shock on his face had been worth it.

Gleb appears and disappears, observes her running around with a book on her head, and sitting in a chair with her shoulders back and her neck arched. He doesn’t comment on any of it, and she doesn’t ask.

**_._ **

On the train, they almost get arrested, and as they jump to a possible death, she notices Gleb just watching _._ Waiting.

When she teases him about warning a girl later, sitting at the vanity of their hotel room, he replies: “it has never been my job to guard you, Anya.”

Before he leaves, he brushes his thumb against her lips with a rather intent look, and Anya is left even more bewildered about him. Who he is, and why he is always in her life. She hasn’t told a soul about him. She doesn’t think she ever will.

**_._ **

“Faces, so many _faces._ ” She sobs into Dmitry’s chest, “they just won’t leave me alone.”

He brings hesitant arms up around her, tells her it was only a dream, but this cannot comfort her. She knows dreams, knows that she should be wary of what they’ll bring. Faces she doesn’t recognise, and _voices_ , and mutterings of a curse, of darkness, of time running out.

_“Why are you always here?” She had just woken up from another of her nightmares, to find him sitting next to her, watching her, unmoving. “Why do I see your face among theirs?”_

_His hands had gripped her arms, propelling her into his arms. “They’re your nightmares, Anya.”_

_“But that is not all they are, are they?” she hadn’t dared look up at his face, content to instead press her cheek into his jacket, shivering at the contrast of the warm material and the ice cold arms around her back. “She always warns me, she always points at you, she always tells me to say my prayers, to be wary of our curse.”_

_“I am but the messenger of your fate,” he had said, but he had sounded angry. “Alexandra should know this,” he had muttered, pulling her down onto the bed, smoothing his hand over her eyes. “You should sleep, Anastasia.”_

_She was gone before she could hear her name. In the morning, she’d forgotten._

**_._ **

The puzzle pieces start falling in place when as she is about to board the boat, an old woman yells at her and screams. Anya can make out some garbled words about _kissed by darkness_ and _time running out_ and _evil._

She looks over her shoulder, and sure enough, Gleb is standing there, frowning at the woman.

“Are you alright, my dear?” Vlad asks, his fingers wrapping around her arm. The woman has been led away by her family, all of them murmuring apologies and shaking their head at her superstitions, but she catches one last word that makes her freeze.

_Смерть._

_Death._

She looks at Gleb again, his piercing cold eyes, his ageless face, the way he is always there, and he brings with him a muted world with frayed edges. He catches her gaze and a slow, wicked smile plays around his mouth before he bows, low and derisive. She can’t stop staring at his mouth, now that she knows what it is those lips can bring. Will bring, one day. She cannot evade him forever.

He smiles at her, as that thought flashes through her head, and she remembers a moment she hadn’t fully understood, until now.

_“You will need me, as you have before, even if you do not know you do.”_

She blinks and he is gone, and in the face of Dmitry’s impatience, her fear and realisation is momentarily forgotten, as she snaps back that _yes, she is coming._

Vlad doesn’t let go of her arm.

**_._ **

Gleb— _Death_ visits her that very night, as she lays trashing from her nightmares. She sits up straight from the moment she notices him, and this time he does not come to comfort her. He settles against the cabin’s door, and watches her. Always watching.

“Death. Is it true?” She hugs her arms around her knees, almost wishing she hadn't asked at all.

He curls his fingers around her left ear, suddenly sitting next to her, not bothering with the conventions of normal movement, and pulls her towards him. She ends up with her bent legs on his lap, her front against his side. “Yes,” he says, “and you, Anastasia.” He whispers the name in her ear, his other hand settling against her back and holding her in place, and hearing it in his voice almost makes her come undone. _Anastasia,_ he whispers, and his voice carries with it flashes of red, screams, a piercing pain, and arms falling away from her, accompanied with a thudding sound, as if something heavy and firm had fallen to the ground— her mother’s body, perhaps. His voice carries the world, and his eyes are cold and hard on hers as he pulls away, he has made a point, but which one, she does not know.

“Why?” She asks, and her voice _trembles_. She keeps her hands clasped in her lap, refuses to let herself reach out towards him, refuses to recognise how much she has always counted and depended on him.

“You are living on borrowed time, Anastasia. Be careful what a dream may bring. Be _very_ careful.”

Visions dance around her. Of him kissing her, taking her away. _You are mine_ echoes in her head, louder and louder, lovelier and lovelier, she should be dead, dead, buried with her family and the rest of history in Russia, and time is ticking—

She blinks and his hand on her chin, pulling her dangerously close. She gasps, pushing him away, scrambling to get of the bed. “Leave me! I don’t want you!”

She flees to Dmitry, to Vlad. This is first time she has ever told him to leave her alone.

She is surprised when he does. She pushes back the sinking feeling, and insists all she feels is relief.

(Lying to herself is easy— it is simply forgetting one memory more.)

**_._ **

Now that she knows, not that _Death himself_ has confirmed that she is indeed Anastasia (and confirmed that she should be dead), Anya starts to remember. She sees flashes, she hears guns, every little boy becomes her brother, she feels the phantom weight of heavy gowns and crowns pushing her down. She grows restless, agitated, she no longer knows what she wants.

The Dowager Empress may very well turn her away. Where will she be then? Anya traces her scars at night, and when she closes her eyes, she sees flames and blood and red, red, red.

.

Vlad grows more and more concerned as she stops eating, Dmitry grows impatient. She knows this is his way of expressing concern, but she doesn’t need a hand trying to shove toast down her throat.

Gleb remains gone. But she can feel his eyes on her, every time she is alone.

.

In Paris, she learns how to feel alive again. She feels free, she feels satisfied. She has reached her target, she is _finally here._

In Paris, she realises she is in love with Dmitry. Gleb becomes furiously mad, when she tells him this, spits that she will always love him more, no matter what she claims.

In Paris, she learns how it feels to wear pretty dresses and jewels. How it feels to live without fear.

In Paris, she finds her family. And when her Nana embraces her, she feels truly, wholly safe. Loved. As if she has found a home.

She should have known it was too good to last.

.

Fate catches up with her in the ballroom of the Quatre saisons Hotel. Lily is holding back the press outside, and her Nana is preparing for the conference. Anya is alone, dressed in a heavy, sparkling dress and long white gloves, and as she decides this life may be nothing for her, that she only wanted family, not a crown and duties to accompany it, as she turns away to chase Dmitry, to run to the train station, she finds herself looking into the barrel of a gun.

“I am very sorry, Anastasia.” He says, just at the same time as the soldier asks her who she is. A Russian Bolshevik, who had followed them all the way from Leningrad and now comes to finish the job. To execute the last of the Romanov’s. She believes him. Death, after all, cannot change fate. He can only stand at the cross road at the end of life, and evaluate if it truly is time.

She squares her shoulders, tilts up her chin, states her name with the full confidence of a person who has finally regained their sense of belonging. “I am the Grand duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.”

“Then you are a dead woman walking,” the soldier spits, hate blazing in his eyes, as he turns off the safety on the gun.

Gleb’s hands are on her cheeks, and suddenly she _remembers_. The cellar in Yekaterinburg, and this man crouching down next to her. “I do love you, you know,” he tells her, and she shakes her head, replies: “as you do all humans.” He loves them as one loves what one can’t get, easily forgotten once acquired. He loves them, and he chases them, and once he has them, he releases them, into fate, oblivion, or someplace else entirely. He loves the poor and the royals equally, and he loves the unhappy most of all. The ones that think of him; the fated, the cursed. The Habsburgs and the Romanovs alike.

“Some more than others,” he says, offering her a tiny yet genuine smile as he puls her face close, and as his lips touch hers, a single shot rings out, a burning pain in her chest reveals the soldier’s aim as true.

As Death kisses her, Anastasia sees her family dancing, whirling around her, happy and unharmed, beckoning her to them, and as the world falls away from her for the last time, edges fraying away entirely, she closes her eyes, and lets herself be carried away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment? Also, I'm sorry.


End file.
